


Lucas and the Terrible, Horrible, No-good, Very Bad Day

by alpacamyhedgehog



Category: Forever (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-02
Updated: 2015-04-02
Packaged: 2018-03-20 04:01:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,954
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3635907
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alpacamyhedgehog/pseuds/alpacamyhedgehog
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Lucas has a bad day and is smarter than he seems.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Lucas and the Terrible, Horrible, No-good, Very Bad Day

Most mornings, Lucas Wahl awoke with a smile on his face, a spring in his step, and a general zest for life in his soul. This was not a typical morning.

If it had been, Lucas would have risen from a restful sleep to the sounds of his alarm clock reminding him that it was time to start the day—another day of investigating the mysteries of death in the morgue with Henry Morgan.

Today there was no restful sleep, no morgue, and no Henry.

Lucas’s alarm blared as loudly as if it had been a fire engine siren barreling through his apartment. Trying to make sense of the noise through his sleep-muddled brain, he slapped haphazardly at the alarm. When this didn’t work, he summoned all the energy he could to crush the clock, like Andrew Garfield’s Spider-Man.

Regrettably, Lucas was not Spider-Man.

The alarm screamed until his brain felt like it was dissolving and oozing out his ears. That was ridiculous, he knew, and Henry would have scolded him for it if he had said it out loud.

Except not, because Henry wasn’t here. And Lucas wouldn’t be seeing him today, but he was still too groggy to remember why.

With a heartfelt groan, Lucas rolled out of bed and onto the floor, grasping wildly for the alarm clock until his fingers felt its cool, familiar surface. He uprooted the clock from its spot on the table, cord and all, and carried it in one hand while attempting to plug his ears with the other. He opened the window at the other end of the apartment and threw out the alarm clock, regardless of the screen.

The alarm clock screamed through the air and shattered on the sidewalk below. A few people were walking past the apartment building at the time, and one or two yelled obscenities at the open window.

“Good morning!” Lucas shouted back, waving through the torn screen. More cursing followed, until Lucas shut the window—on his finger.

“Dammit,” he muttered. By this point, he was sufficiently awake to be glad he didn’t use his phone alarm. At least it was a cheap clock lying shattered on the cement, and not an expensive smartphone.

He stepped back and surveyed the studio apartment as he slowly grew more alert. What a mess.

Lucas didn’t consider himself either a neat freak or a slob. At best, he balanced the hectic pace of city life with a sense of responsibility by keeping most areas tidy while ignoring the grime in the bathroom and the growing pile of dirty dishes in the sink. At worst, he either let his living space look like it had been taken over by a family of monkeys with a passion for Chinese takeout, or he couldn’t sleep until he had dusted every square inch of the place.

The only consistently neat area of the apartment was Lucas’s collection of comic books and graphic novels. He had framed some of the more collectible editions and hung them on the exposed brick wall; most of other books he had carefully organized and shelved. Still, the collection had rapidly outgrown the bookshelf, and he had piled some of the overflow in neat stacks until he could find a better spot for them. His heart paused in dismay when he noticed that he had tripped over one of the comic book piles in his rush to dispose of the alarm clock.

“Aw, man,” he groaned, worrying the back of his head with one hand before stooping to inspect the books. They were Hawkeye comics and actually kind of rare—he’d spent more of his paycheck than he wanted to admit to get the winning bid for them on eBay. Most of them were undamaged, but the front cover of the top comic was rumpled. He fumbled to smooth it out and accidentally ripped the paper in the process.

He let out a strangled cry of frustration and sat back on his heels. What he really needed was a shower. Maybe that would clear his mind.

After dropping the bar of soap six times and dropping the shampoo bottle four times (twice on his foot!), Lucas felt slightly more awake, but his mood had certainly not improved.  
He decided to make himself some coffee, because caffeine cures all ills, right? Not when one accidentally dumps the grounds in the pot. Ick.

As Lucas sipped his…chewy coffee and munched on a charred pop tart, he did a quick self-assessment.

One. He was having a bad day. A very bad day.

Two. He needed to buy a new alarm clock. Possibly more Hawkeye comics.

Three. He sniffed and cleared his throat experimentally. The cold he’d had yesterday seemed to have cleared.

Ah, yesterday. Now he remembered what had gone wrong—what he had tried to forget with a lot of beer and a lot of sleep.

He’d been fired yesterday.

Lucas been coughing and sneezing all morning, and Henry had been inching away from him even more than usual. This had sort of hurt Lucas’s feelings, because if Henry had been sick, Lucas certainly wouldn’t have been deterred from shadowing the ME’s every move. One must sometimes sacrifice one’s health in the pursuit of science.

The two had been examining a body when Henry had interrupted Lucas and asked him to hand him a scalpel. As Lucas delivered his final comment, he gave Henry the tool while sneezing all over it.

Henry had held the snot-covered scalpel as far away from himself and the body as he could. Lucas couldn’t always read Henry’s expressions, but this one had been all-out rage.

“Get out,” Henry had told him in a strained voice.

As much as Lucas loved hanging out in the morgue, his fear of Henrys’ displeasure sometimes outweighed his need for Henry’s friendship. He had let out a strangled “’Kay,” and left to get his stuff from the break room.

Now, as he finished off the pop tart, he wondered if he had remembered everything correctly. He’d assumed he’d been fired for sneezing on valuable equipment, but that didn’t sound like Henry. Good old Henry—forgive and forget, right? Well, maybe not so much. But still. Henry had yelled at him for a lot worse over the course of their long and colorful colleagueship, but he hadn’t fired him until now. Having a cold seemed like such a minor offense.

Maybe he had said something wrong?

Lucas drained the last of the coffee grounds from his mug and started carrying it to the sink. When he saw that the sink and most of the kitchen counter were covered in the past week’s dishes, he set the mug on the edge of the counter and turned to retrieve the pop tart wrapper. In the same instant, his elbow brushed the handle of the mug, which fell to the kitchen floor and shattered.

Crap.

As he ran to sweep up the shards, he couldn’t clear the thought that he’d been mistaken from his mind. Wouldn’t it be great to know for sure why Henry had been so mad at him? If he knew, maybe he could reason with the ME. Maybe he could talk Henry into a better mood (unlikely). Maybe he could get his job back (even more unlikely).

Still, it was worth a try, and he knew exactly who he could ask.

On the way to Abe’s Antiques, Lucas fell down the last two steps outside his apartment building, tripped over his shoelaces twice, walked into a prim businesswoman, and stopped at a coffee shop to order a latte before realizing he was out of cash. By the time he reached the shop, he was fluctuating between feeling better at the thought of talking with Abe and sinking into an even worse mood than before.

“Hey, Abe!” Lucas managed to say with a cheery wave when he saw his friend rearranging some vases on an antique table. He had hit it off with Henry’s roommate since the incident at Christmas, and he sometimes came over to hang out with Abe for beer and old sci-fi marathons.

Admittedly this had started as a way to see Henry during his leave of absence from the morgue, but Lucas genuinely enjoyed spending time with Abe, who appreciated the company when Henry was busy with…whatever he was working on in the basement. Abe was much easier to talk with than Henry, and Lucas got the impression that Abe actually appreciated his sense of humor.

“Lucas, my man!” Abe looked up, grinning. “You’re here early today. I thought I’d see if you wanted to come for dinner tonight.”

“Mmm,” Lucas muttered. He thought about the takeout boxes scattered all over his apartment and the dirty dishes piled in the kitchen sink, but he wondered if he should make an excuse not to come. Dinner with his former boss didn’t sound so great at the moment.

“Hey, what’s wrong? You look like death warmed over.” Abe shuffled closer, concern twisting at the wrinkles in his weathered face.

“Meh, I’m ok. Guess I’m just having a bad day.”

“They happen to the best of us. Hey, this one time when I was in the army, I had the worst day ever, and…”

By the time Abe finished his story, he had led Lucas to the kitchen and brewed a pot of strong coffee.

“So. Want to talk about it?” he said, pushing a steaming cup of coffee into Lucas’s hands.

Lucas sighed. “Yeah, well, Henry fired me yesterday.”

“What?!”

“Yep. Fired. No more Henry, no more morgue, no more teasing the secrets of death from congealing blood and organs.”

“First: gross. Second: I can’t believe Henry would just fire you like that. He never said anything about it to me. Did he say why?”

“Nope.” Lucas slurped his still-scathing coffee. The caffeine and the warmth seeped through his body like a good memory. “Actually, that’s why I wanted to talk with you.”

Abe tapped his chin with his index finger. “Come to think of it, Henry was in a really bad mood all day—even at breakfast. He must have gotten up on the wrong side of the bed, kind of like you today.”

“Yeah, well…are you sure Henry didn’t say anything about firing me or anything?”

“Yeah, I’m sure. Can you think of anything you might have done to tick him off?”

“I sneezed all over a scalpel before I handed it to him. Hey, don’t look at me like that! I had a cold yesterday, ok?”

Abe shuddered a little and shook his head. “Ok, were you talking with him before you gave him your slimy germs?”

“Yeah, we were talking. I mean, I was talking. Henry was mostly just ignoring me.”

“Okaay.” Abe was beginning to sound impatient. “Do you remember what you were talking about?”

Lucas thought a moment. “Oh, yeah! I was making morgue puns. Like, ‘We sure have a lot of bodies to examine today. People must be dying to get in.’ Or, ‘Hey, Henry, I’m surprised you decided to become an ME. I’ve heard it’s a dead-end job.’ Stuff like that.”

As he refilled his cup of coffee, Abe made a noise between a laugh and a groan. “That’s terrible.”

“I know, I know. This happens when I’m sick. The worse I feel, the faster the puns go downhill.”

“Okay, Lucas. This is very important. What were you saying to Henry when you gave him that scalpel? Was it another pun, or did you say something else?”

“Um.” Lucas downed the last of his coffee and began to fiddle with the cup, first twisting it by the handle, then turning it around and around in his hand.

“Oh, yeah,” he said finally. “I had just cracked the dead-end job joke, and then I coughed and sneezed, and then I said something like, ‘But you don’t have to worry about that, right, Doc? You know, because you’re immortal? So you don’t have any dead ends.’”

“You said what?!” Abe nearly dropped his coffee. It took deliberate effort for him to set the cup down without spilling it.

“Yeah, that’s it.” He paused for a second to allow Abe to recover, but when he didn’t, Lucas rushed on. “Do you think that’s why Henry got so upset? Because I mentioned his condition? I haven’t said anything before, because I thought everybody knew…”

Abe held up a hand. “Wait. Back up a minute. Do you mean to tell me that you know about Henry? That he—”

“—Lives forever? Well, yeah, duh.”

“Duh?”

“Duh. I mean, he’s always making snarky jokes about time and immortality and stuff. Not to mention his encyclopedic knowledge of anything and everything from the late eighteenth century on—aside from modern pop and nerd culture, of course. I’d guess he’s about…hmm…two hundred years old, give or take. And,” he wagged a finger for emphasis, “I tested a sample of his blood once, just out of curiosity.”

“You didn’t!” Abe suspended his shock for a moment of admiration.

“You bet I did. He accidentally cut himself while opening up one of the bodies, and when he wasn’t looking, I collected the blood out of curiosity. For science, right? Anyway, it was the weirdest thing, it…”

“Spare me the details. I’ll just assume it was very unusual.”

“That’s for sure. I’ve only seen one blood sample with similar conditions, but that one was so extreme that it couldn’t have been real. Someone had to have tampered with it. This one was definitely Henry’s and definitely un-tampered-with.”

“Hey, kid, you’re pretty smart.”

“Well,” Lucas began, tapping his head with one index finger, “this ain’t just a hat rack. Actually, I just asked myself what Henry would do in a situation like that, and the voice in my head that sounds like Henry said—″

“Lucas, no. I don’t want to hear about voices in your head. But,” he paused, shaking a finger dramatically, “I think it would be for the best if you hushed up about this whole immortality thing. See, not many people know about that, and Henry wants to keep it that way.”

“Really? I just assumed it was kinda obvious and I was one of the last people to catch on, as usual.”

Abe sighed. “No, I need you to understand—do not mention this again to anyone except for me. Henry gets paranoid about people finding out, because in the past people who find out his secret either pick up their pitchforks against what they don’t understand, or they try to figure out what’s wrong with him.”

“Isn’t that what Henry’s doing, though? Trying to figure out what makes him tick—or keep on ticking?”

“Yes, it is,” Abe said, finally picking up his coffee again. “The difference is that it’s Henry’s choice to learn about his condition and do something about it if he can, not anyone else’s.”

“Ah, good old privacy and human dignity, yadda yadda. I get it. Still, studying other people’s deaths when you yourself can’t die seems like a disappointing way to spend your life. If I were immortal, I’d…” Lucas stopped long enough to put his hands up in response to Abe’s sour expression. “No, you’re right, I get it. I promise I won’t say anything ever again. It is cool, though. I am kind of surprised that other people don’t know by now. You’d think Jo would figure it out; she spends almost as much time with Henry as I do…”

Lucas’s train of thought was interrupted by the sound of the bell ringing exuberantly in the shop.

Without looking up, Abe muttered, “Ah, speak of the devil,” just a few seconds before Henry blew into the kitchen. With disheveled hair and a scarf thrown hastily over his shoulders, he looked as if he had flown all the way to the antiques shop.

“There you are, Lucas,” Henry said, grabbing Lucas’s shoulder and nearly pulling him out of his chair. “Where have you been?”

“I…I thought you fired me?” Lucas managed.

“You what? No, I sent you home yesterday because you were ill, and, well, too be honest…” He coughed nervously. “Your puns were getting out of hand. I wasn’t having the best of days, so that may have caused me to overreact.”

“Yeah, um. Sorry about that.”

Abe was grinning. “Told ya it was a misunderstanding.”

“But you missed me, though?” Lucas continued. “You really missed me? Because if you hadn’t actually meant to fire me, I don’t think you’d even notice I was gone. You’d be too busy science-ing and saving the world with your mad detective skills.”

Henry shot him a withering look. “Lucas. Don’t push your luck.”

“Okay, fine.”

“You’re partly correct, though. I’m working on a new case that Detective Martinez asked me to help with this morning, and I need you to help me roleplay possible murder situations.”

“Let me guess, I get to be the victim again?” Lucas sounded reluctant, but he was still grinning. He had the feeling that it was going to be a good day. Maybe even a great one.

As the two said their farewells to Abe and hurried outside, Henry sneezed loudly.

“I must be coming down with something,” he said.

The two walked on in silence for a few minutes before Lucas spoke again.

“Hey, Doc. I know I should let the puns die, so to speak, but I just wanted to let you know that I was wrong about the dead-end joke. I have a feeling you’ll have a long and happy career here, and I’m super glad I can be a part of that.”


End file.
